


We Three Kings

by Lightning_Skies



Category: Blade (Movie Series), Underworld (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Small Fandom Big Bang, WIP Big Bang, WIP Big Bang 2016
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3860395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning_Skies/pseuds/Lightning_Skies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drake, son of the blood god La Magra, gifted his most loyal servants sips of his blood. 7000 years later he wakes in the modern world to find that he's accidentally created an entire race of vampires. His 'children' can't even walk in the sun without burning and are having problems taking care of a group of human hunters and a hybrid. He is most interested in the hunter, Hannibal King, who smells of his blood, but is NOT a vampire.</p><p>However, he isn't the only one interested in the secrets of Hannibal's blood. A second race evolved from his bloodline and Hannibal is stolen away by their king, Lucian, to be used in his war against the vampires.</p><p>Drake, Lucien and Hannibal all want the same thing, the elimination of the vampire race, but can they get along for long enough to accomplish it or will their differences inspire them to kill each other rather than their common enemy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically that Blade:Trinity/Underworld fusion that no one asked for, where I replace Michael's character with Hannibal.
> 
> This fic has references to Hannibal King's comic backstory and characters from Blade:The Series.
> 
> Parts of this really didn't want to get written and other parts practically wrote themselves. Asher COMPLETELY took on a life of his own. 
> 
> I had a lot of fun smushing the two vampire mythologies together and they fit absurdly well.

In the beginning there was the Elder Blood God La Magra and it existed without flesh or form in the void beyond knowing. It was hunger incarnate and feasted upon the spirits lost between the realms. It lurked in the dark nothingness and watched with endless greed and hatred as the younger gods it fed upon learned to escape its appetite by walking reality.

These clever new gods created physical worlds to float in the void and populated them with all manner of tasty creatures. The Creators hid from their ravenous elder among the hard substance of corporeality and glutted themselves on their creations. La Magra was enraged as glittering worlds and glowing pathways of faith sprung up around it and fewer and fewer of the little gods and spirits wandered the emptinessess between.

La Magra had no form of its own with which to walk existence and its destructive nature was so pure and unmitigated that the magicks of true genesis were beyond it. Instead it spilt its ichor, the essence of its power, upon the face of a nearby earth and shaped from dust and hunger its one true son, Draqulia. And he was a terrible plague of violence given physical form.

Draqulia killed the younger gods who had created this world and settled in the cradle of their civilization. Through an endless campaign of terror and conquest he claimed the lands from horizon to horizon in the name of his creator, La Magra. Great temples were erected in the Elder Blood God’s name and it glutted itself on the cursed souls of its forsaken followers and their enemies.

Years passed unending and Draqulia easily conquered everything he cared to set his sight on. As word of his exploits spread, the worship of his person increased until it eclipsed that of his master. The name of the Elder Blood God faded into memory and statues of the blood demon ‘Drakula’ sprung up in the temples across civilization. He was revered as the one true God of his people and they willingly sold their newly born children into service at his temples in the hopes of earning his favor and a taste of his divine essence. A simple sip of his exalted blood became the most sought after honor and the highest sacrament of his cult.

The dread lord Draqulia conquered what lands there were to conquer, eliminated all those that held any worth as adversaries, ensured the fealty and loyalty of the population and finally, he surpassed his creator. He had been too successful in his purpose and found himself irresolute for the first time since his inception. He was the God of his people now, but there was no desire left in him. His lust for flesh and blood was fulfilled by eager zealots before he could lift a finger in search of it while his lust for violence was deprived and left unsatisfied for he had already killed everything worth killing. He could feel himself grow listless and lethargic in the absence of the hunt.

Gradually his dissatisfaction outpaced his will to endure and he chose to sleep, deciding to rise only when the lust for life filled his belly once more.

And so, he slept.

His followers guarded his sleeping place for as long as their frail mortal memory held, which was not long at all. As their memories began to slip, the oldest among them wrote out their lord god’s laws and tenants, creating the Book of Erebus. It too was eventually lost with time. A relic of a long lost religion, the origin story to that which was never meant to exist.

Draqulia slept through the ages as the world changed around him. His empire quickly crumbled to dust without its leader, their absent god leaving them to their fates. He slept as the waters of the sea receded and his lush kingdom was claimed by the sands of the desert.

He slept as the last descendants of the most loyal of his servants, passed the taste of his sacrament down through their bloodlines for thousands of years to a Hungarian nobleman, Alexander Corvinus. Plague ravaged the lands and it was only the lingering gift of his long forgotten god in his blood that saved Corvinus from the same fate as his people. Instead, his blood changed him to endure the sickness and for the first time in thousands of years a new immortal, a young god, walked the world again.

From Alexander, Marcus and William Corvinus were beget, and from them rose the vampire and werewolf races. A third son, his name quickly forgotten, did not attain immortality for himself, instead his blood stored away the gift unrealized and passed it to his sons and their sons, hidden again for over a thousand years until it was needed in a later era.

The new races of wolf and bat bore all the hunger and rage of the blood demon Draqulia and the Elder Blood God La Magra before him. They quickly learned a new way of propagation, biting and turning large armies of followers, spreading their curse to prolific swarms of progeny that flooded across the world and clashed again and again in bloody battles for supremacy.

Still, Draqulia slept.

Through the rise of the vampire covenant, through the rise and fall of the werewolves and then the rise and decline of the lycans. He slept through the careful excavation and looting of his city and his temple by a power hungry vampiric upstart with delusions of godhood, and through the creation of a hybrid daywalker.

It wasn’t until the ritual to summon the Elder Blood God La Magra that Draqulia began to stir from his rest. The powerful touch of his creator’s essence could be felt from across the world. The fleeting kiss of his god’s wrath was weak and guttered out as quickly as it had formed, but that familiar taste of the void was intriguing enough to arouse Draqulia’s curiosity for the first time in thousands of years.

What could this new world possibly contain that was able to give the Elder Blood God physical presence for even the briefest of times? Even more intriguing, what could possibly manage to wrench that foothold from the voracious god?

So it was that Draqulia rose at the impertinent prompting of the next group of vampires that found his resting place and for the first time looked his ill-begotten mistakes right in the face. These tremulous, cowering things that bore a hint of his scent under their overpoweringly sweet stench of death. They were his, created from him and belonging to him, but he had not birthed them. He would have smothered such offensive things in their cribs. What exactly had he missed?


	2. Chapter 2

From their first meeting these fell creatures failed to endear themselves to their lord, god and creator.

They were fools enough to wake him from five thousand years of fasting without anything at hand to quench his reawakening thirst. He made due with what was available and ate the small weaselly looking one, carelessly ripping his head off in hunger. The weak flavor of his thin blood was a great disappointment to the ancient blood demon, who had grown used to the sumptuous feasts provided by his people at the height of his rule. The blood was watery and bland, the memories it contained flat and passionless. From the fragmented remembrance carried in the blood, Draqulia learned their current form of language and the bastardization of his name that history had remembered, Drake.

He also learned the identities of his uninvited guests, Danica and Asher of House Talos. They were new bloods among their immortal society and sought him out to buy their way to the top by trading on his strength and his blood. He had been forgotten by the world and time had twisted his followers beyond recognition but still they sought the blessings of his blood. Drake sneered, some things never changed.

He accepted the siblings' invitation back to their city, curious about how this new species had come to be and interested to discover if they were typical examples of their race. He certainly hoped that they weren't. The dark haired female, Danica, had delusions of being his equal, his queen, despite her complete lack of relevant skills or redeeming traits. The larger male, Jarko, was a waste of the bulging muscle and sinew he was made from. The pale blonde, Asher, despite looking sickly, was moderately better stock, being properly deferential and holding no illusion or presumption of his worth in Drake's eyes. He might make a good servant, once the influence of his sister was removed.

Once settled in the Talos' tower of metal, Drake fed deeply on a wide cross section of humans to maximize his adaptation to this modern world. The siblings were confused when he rejected the pretty but empty headed young things they threw at him but complied quickly enough when he demanded doctors, artists and scholars of differing races and backgrounds. He drank in their memories, their languages, their knowledge and culture. What he discovered did not please him. From a human perspective vampires, as these ill-begotten spawn of his were called, were creatures of legend, an amusement to scare children. Widely known and yet feared by none.

His people, not that he wished to lay claim upon them, were weak, hedonistic scum that traded on their predatory appeal and the ignorant naivety of the masses. They bred and thrived in the shadows to the point where the light of the sun burned them. They fought only in petty political arenas and were so weak that they cowered away from a single hunter.

The Talos house had its uses and would be allowed to serve him until he passed final judgement on their impure race. Instead, Drake released his frustrations in the utter destruction he wrought on the hapless clerks of a goth novelty store in the city. Vampires were not a gimmicky motif to be sold off as useless curios. To have his own name, bastardized as it had become, associated with such heretic fallacy made his true form crawl under his skin with the desire to raze the entirety of this unsound world to the ground.

It both thrilled and disgusted him, this broken empire that festered in the ashes of the perfect order he had commanded for thousands of years. He finally had a purpose again, to clean away the filth of decay and lead any that could be salvaged from his unanticipated offspring to a new golden era.

He had all but written off this new race when he finally found an opportunity to take the measure of the ‘Daywalker’, Blade. Drake had to admit to a small bout of amusement that a skill as paltry as braving the sun was considered a mythical ability among these sad beasts. The more time he spent observing the ‘hominae nocturnum’ the more he saw beyond their outrageous corruption of his gifts to the sad, crippled beings they truly were. They were pitiable, their minds so broken they imagined themselves to be gods. He had walked with gods and slaughtered them by the hundreds, these were not gods, these were nothing but a sad echo of the shadow of his power.

The House Talos relied recklessly on their human familiars, giving mortals the authority to act in their name during the day. Drake immediately saw the absurdity in creating such a gaping weakness in their command structure. He wasn’t at all surprised when reports started coming in that the Daywalker and his pet hunters were working their way through the ranks of the human guard during the day, brutalizing them while their vampire masters were unable to come to their aide.

Danica was useless, she had climbed up on a table and was destroying it’s finish with her ridiculous footwear as she paced back and forth screeching unintelligibly about Blade, a king and a whistler. Although it was possible that all of the hunters had such odd names, Drake was equally sure of the possibility that the fraying threads holding her sanity together were finally dissolving.

Asher took things in hand, as he was prone to do, snapping orders here and there to send his minions scrambling. He dealt competently with the realities of his current command and leadership, while his sister dreamed up fantasies of jewel encrusted crowns and thrones of gold. Should she ever by some miracle attain her coveted kingdom, she would either burn the whole thing down around herself or her brother would become its shadow king, dancing to her whims and holding all the power as he humored her insanity. Such an existence had to be exhausting, Drake didn’t see why the man hadn’t put her out of her misery yet. He was pleased to be La Magra’s only creation. Had there been two of his ilk the world would have crumbled long ago.

The tightness at the edges of Asher’s eyes and the puckered expression on his face gave tell to his loss of composure and Drake found his interest peaked. Asher Talos handled his sister with grace and experience, the ancient demon was curious what manner of setback could so overburden the man who devoted his life to cleaning up any manner of disastrous debacles. Surely a few dead or beaten humans was of no consequence.

Asher jumped when he turned away from delivering a sharply spoken order to do a full check of their network of familiars, suppliers and informants to find Drake a hairs breadth behind him. He had kept a wary eye on the blood demon since they had pulled him out of the sand, but had lost track of him with his attempts to minimize the fallout from this full scale attack on the Talos House’s familiars.

Dan thought they had the beast of a man domesticated, but Asher knew better. He had seen this behavior in some of the older purebloods on the council. Of the Twelve Houses, the upstart House Talos, formed in the last few decades only rose to the rank of the Twelve six years ago with the destruction of the House Erebus at Deacon Frost and Blade’s hands. The other houses had existed for 800 years, many of the pure blooded members were even older. The Talos were so far beneath the other twelves houses that they were viewed as children, not experienced, intelligent or mature enough to even form an opinion worth listening to.

The Twelve had accepted House Talos with the provision that they destroy the Daywalker, Blade, for his crimes against the House Erebus. The Council made it sound like a simple task and Asher was sure that they were expected to die by Blade’s hand. If by some miracle they succeeded, the Twelve would offer nothing but ridicule for how much difficulty Talos had in taking him down. They had sent Asher and Danica to fail and die, against an enemy they didn’t want to risk facing themselves.

Drake was treating them the same way. They obviously hadn’t earned even the slightest bit of respect from him and he was standing back and taking his amusement from their struggles as he accustomed himself to the new world. Losing Blade, drugged and weak as he was hadn’t impressed the ancient vampire. He was circling them, studying them and sizing them up. If he felt that they were a threat, overstepping their place or even decided they looked tasty they were done. All of them. No mercy, no exceptions, no recourse.

Asher, for one, wasn’t ready to die on anyone’s sword or fangs, be it the father of them all or the hybrid hunter. He squared his shoulders in his bespoke Ravazzollo suit and steeled his resolve, locking down the gibbering fear instinct that screamed bloody murder at being startled by this personification of death, "Lord Drake."

Drake’s alien orange-gold eyes whirled and the pupil split and winked as he gazed piercingly at Asher. "You are the only one in this house that continues to treat me with proper deference. The others believe that because I wear the face of a man and walk among you that I am one of you. That I will fight for your cause without hesitation. They are wrong."

Asher grimaced, "I know."

Drake hummed what sounded like approval at that, “You do, don’t you.” The slit in his pupils contracted like traps slamming shut, appearing round and normal once more. If eyes were the window to the soul, Asher wondered what it meant that even Drake’s eyes contained gaping maws ready to swallow you whole if you gazed into them for too long. "Your sister believes that I will grant her godhood. As if I was foolish enough to curse this world to the rule of a broken maddened god."

The blonde flinched, Asher didn't want Dan dead, but ever since the day she had come home with fangs and dragged him into the shitstorm that was her nightlife it had been increasingly difficult to refuse her anything, even the stuff that would get her killed. She wasn't the type of woman who listened to or slowed down for anyone. The best he could do was clean up her messes and prepare to catch her when she pushed too hard and had everything blow up in her face. Assuming that her grand plans left anything of her to catch. Danica was an all-in kind of woman.

“Their silent expectations fill this place. Every one of them has a prayer of demand for their god, make me stronger, make me faster, give me riches, give me power, defeat my enemies. They ask for everything and offer me nothing in return, as if I should be grateful that you interrupted my rest. And yet... you, Asher, the Shadow King of the House of Talos, have yet to ask anything of me. Why is that?”

Asher swallowed before answering carefully, “I have nothing to offer you, and I’m not stupid enough to make demands of someone who owes me nothing and could easily take everything.”

“Smart man.” Drake flashed his fangs in a terrifying display of amusement. “What would you do if I freely offered my assistance?”

Asher froze, his tongue heavy in his mouth as he stared mutely at this primordial predator in front of him. Drake had suddenly upgraded his observation to actively testing Asher and he didn’t even know what the ancient beast was looking for. “I would.. of course... accept…?” Asher almost managed to make it sound like a statement rather than a question “..any assistance you were willing to offer, should you chose to do so.”

“How... diplomatic.” Asher felt like he had dodged a bullet, but just barely. The distaste in his voice showed how disappointed Drake was in his answer, but the man didn’t look surprised, just resigned. Asher felt oddly like he had let the Father of them all down by not having the conviction to be more truthful in the face of his fear response.

“Fuck it. You really want to know?” Asher threw his hands in the air, unknowingly mirroring his sister, who was still ranting on the table behind him even as she kicked a familiar in the head. He may burn slower than Dan, but he WAS capable of building up to her level of insanity if he was put under enough pressure. Drake’s eyes flashed from one sibling to the other taking in their similarities with amusement. “Blade and his fucking Nightstalker groupies are dismantling our network of familiars and there’s not one goddamn thing I can do about it until the sun goes down. They’re working their way up through the ranks and if they get to that coward, Vance, they’re going to get their hands on some sensitive information. I would REALLY, REALLY love to ask you to go and tear them inside out for me before that happens, but you scare the ever loving shit out of me.”

Drake actually smiled at him for losing his cool. “So, you DO have some fire to you after all.”

Asher tugged his suit back into place and scoffed in embarrassment. It had felt surprisingly good to let loose. He’d been wound up so tight from the Twelve demanding progress and Blade killing his men and Dan whining about King and Drake breathing down his neck that he was surprised he hadn’t ground his fangs flat. He smirked bitterly, “I’ve been keeping up with Dan my whole life. It’s not exactly an easy job.”

“Where can I find this Vance?”

“Wait, you’re actually going to do it?” Asher gaped at him. “That’s all it takes?”

“Do not mistake me. That I choose to involve myself is not a sign of my alliance with your house.” Drake growled harshly, the skin of his face rippling in threat of the demonic form beneath. “I grow bored with watching your pathetic scheming and wish to take the measure of your opponent myself.”

“Hey, you want to let loose on my enemies, you’re not going to hear an argument from me.” Asher assured, “I’ll take what I can get.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, Jesus. It’s HIM! Abby, it’s Him! It’s Drake!”

Drake was surprised when it was one of the human hunters, presumably Danica’s hated adversary Hannibal King, that caught on to his charade first. He hadn’t even shown the Talos siblings the true extent of his shape changing abilities. He was not a show pony for Danica’s amusement, no matter what her deluded mind believed.

The hunter reacted with quick reflexes, drawing his gun and getting a shot off before Drake grabbed him. He wrapped King’s arm behind his back and held him securely by the throat, jostling him firmly until he relaxed into the hold to avoid being choked.

“So. You’re the hunters they all fear.”

“ _Jus’ shoot ‘im_ ” King choked out. It was an admirable sentiment in the face of his own death. These hunters were far more amusing and full of life than the apathetic vampires that claimed to be their betters. Drake ran his nose up the hunter’s bristled cheek, they smelled more appealing too. The scent of Hannibal King’s warm flesh was just as delectable as Drake’s first breath of clean air after a few thousand years buried in the sand. The fact that he enraged Danica so thoroughly endeared the man to him as well. This little confrontation was far more fun than watching the vampires squabble amongst themselves. The irony was not lost on him that he was doing battle with ‘kings’ once more.

Drake drew one of the hunter’s silver stakes from its sheath to clearly demonstrate his immunity to the touch of their weapons, “Go ahead, Blade. Show me what you’re made of.” He stabbed the stake into the meat of King’s shoulder, a painful injury, but neither lethal or debilitating. The hunter was the most interesting person he’d found so far in this terrible future. It wouldn’t do to kill him so soon.

He dove out the window and lead Blade on a chase through the city. It was exhilarating to have someone willing to challenge him again. In his time none were so foolish as to believe themselves his equal. The hybrid wasn’t his match, proven when Drake easily outmaneuvered him, but he made for a few minutes of pleasant diversion.

In the end, Blade didn’t meet Drake’s expectations. The hybrid was stronger than a human or a vampire but still carried the corrupted taint of the night breed. Drake found himself disappointed as he felt the gnawing hunger chipping away at the man’s aura. He could feel it surging up in the hybrid during their hunt. Blade’s two halves weren’t in balance and sooner or later he would give into the sickness crawling through his veins and turn into just another vampire. He wasn’t special, he was just turning more slowly, dying by painful inches rather than all at once.

Drake was beginning to think that the gift of his blood was incompatible with the creatures of this world. It was a disappointing prospect to wake to a race that held the potential of his lineage but was rotten beyond salvation.

Drake noticed the smear of blood on the heel of his hand, presumably from the human hunter’s wound and lapped at it curiously. The full bodied taste zinged across his senses as faint whispers of a life lived to the fullest filled his mind. Drake swiped his tongue across his palm again, more urgently this time, seeking out every hint of flavor. Most curiously of all, the man tasted faintly of Drake himself, clean of the sickly sweet taint of death that the vampires carried. 

“Who are you, hunter.. and why do you taste like you’re mine?”

* * *

“Tell me about Hannibal King.”

Asher jumped and whirled on the heel of his custom fit Prada spazzolato penny loafers, wincing internally at the shriek of the soles against the floor even as his gaze searched the dark corners of his office. He finally spotted Drake in the deepest shadows, watching him expectantly, his creepy animalistic pupils blown wide again. Asher couldn't help but be worried about whatever had caught the ancient demon's attention and caused the intent focus in his eyes. His mind caught up with what Drake had just asked and he smirked at the Hell that was about to rain down on that smug son of a bitch, King.

"Hannibal was one of Danica's favorite toys, and that’s saying something considering she was always the type to behead her Barbies. She picked him up the same place she found her obsession with you. He belonged to Deacon Frost, a vampire who researched the ancient myths so thoroughly that he managed to find you and dig your city up.”

“It took him something like 8 excavation digs and a century to find what he wanted in the sand, but he was one hell of a fixated and unrelenting bastard. Danica considered him a visionary and he was probably the only man that she has ever admired.”

”In a twisted way, I think she was in love with him, her dark champion of the fuckheads.” Asher grimaced at the thought of Frost, he’d always hated the psycho. Deacon Frost was the same tangled ball of bugnuts that Danica was, without any of the family loyalty. He pulled down the whiskey decanter from his bookshelf. This conversation needed a drink.

“Frost was even worse than Dan, he was obsessed with summoning your daddy, the great and powerful La Magra. Thought if he could translate the right recipe from this ancient vampire bible he found in one of your temples, he could bake himself up a homecooked god.  La Magra’s power combined with his body and mind. Reports are sketchy about what really went down, but every vampire on earth felt whatever mystical bullshit happened the night he tried it.”

Asher left a glass with a few fingers of whiskey on the small table nearest Drake’s elbow and retreated behind his desk with a slightly pinched look as he realized he’d just served his favorite 30-year single malt to a man who had gone to sleep before anyone had even dreamt up the process of alcohol distillation. He splashed an extra finger’s worth into his own glass at the thought.

“He succeeded.” Drake said simply, lifting the glass and sniffing it. “For a brief moment La Magra walked this earth. I recognized its power.”

“That is the most terrifying fucking thing I have ever heard.” Asher toasted the air sardonically and tugged on the knot of his silk tie in agitation as he gulped at his whiskey in a vulgar way. It’s not like Drake would know he wasn’t properly savoring the liquor. “You’re bad enough. Immortality isn’t worth having to deal with Gods. That shit is way above my paygrade.”

“Indeed.”

Shored up by the warmth of the alcohol, Asher continued, “So anyway, Frost spent most of the 20th century digging up your city and looting your temples, until he found his legendary vampire bible and then spent years trying to translate it. You, he left to rot. He apparently didn't have any use for the earthborn son of a god when he was aiming to become the big kahuna himself.”

“It didn't exactly work out well for him. Supposedly, he actually managed to translate the fucking book, built the temple to it's exact specifications and even hand crafted the main ingredient, a hybrid child, born in the same moment that its mother was turned. Frost created Blade. Brilliant fucking move on his part.”

“So, bouncing baby boy slaughtered what was left of House Erebus after Frost fed their pure-blooded leaders to La Magra. This left an opening on the council for a new house to rise. That's where Talos came in. It's now our job to clean up the clusterfuck that Frost created and put down his little pet project. Danica got it in her head that it was a brilliant idea to continue Frost’s work, in memorandum or some shit. Hannibal was just another of Frost's belongings that Dan picked up when we inherited his estate and the remains of his house.” Asher sculled the rest of his drink, relishing in the slight thrill of defying centuries of drinking traditions and mishandling such an expensive liquor. He’d played at being high class with Dan for so long that he rarely indulged his whims to tear down and defile the tokens of affluence the way he used to. He’d been playing in the pure-blood’s sandbox for too long.

“Frost kept him close, something to do with the possibility that his blood would be needed in the ritual. I don’t know. I never read the notes. The only reason King survived was because he wasn’t even there, he spent the whole time chained to Frost’s bed, but Dan is convinced that Hannibal is special somehow. She just can’t figure out how. I guess that secret died with Frost. I never saw anything special about him, just another suck head blood slut that was too stubborn to be worth the trouble. We had to drug him and starve him near to death to keep him obedient. It really chaps Dan’s ass that whatever King knows about La Magra or Frost’s research, he never spoke a word about it no matter how she tried to break him. If he wasn’t such a little shithead, I’d almost admire his balls.”

The edges of Drake's eyes bled orange, "Starvation and abuse may earn obedience, but it will never earn loyalty."

"You're telling me. King played the obedient pet for just long enough to get his hands on a weapon. Turns out he had been some kind of hotshot private eye back in the days before Frost got his hands on him. He clearly knew his way around a gun and a knife. He waited until those goddamn hunters, the Nightguard or whatever the fuck they call themselves, attacked one of our clubs and got himself lost in the scuffle. They managed to whip up some kind of cure for him. Funny thing was that, no matter what they tried, the cure only ever worked on him. Some of the stories I’ve heard though... the cure let him walk in the sun, but I’m not sure it turned him fully human again. No one has that much luck in a fight."

"Hannibal King used to be a vampire?" Drake demanded, like that was the most unbelievable part of what Asher had said to him.

"You should have seen it, he was magnificent, the vicious little fuck. He refused to hunt or bite anyone on his own, but starve him for long enough and he'd tear right into whatever you put in front of him."

Drake had much to think about. If what Asher said was true then there really was a connection between himself and the hunter. This Deacon Frost had seen it as well. He had much to think about.

But first…

He gathered one of the remaining crystal glasses the blonde displayed ostentatiously on his bookshelf and tore into his wrist with his fangs. He handed the pale vampire the full draught. “Drink.”

Asher almost dropped the tumbler and it was only his instinct to save his luxury carpet from blood stains that saved him from wasting the gift. “You’re just going to hand me what Danica has been begging you for?”

“You will not tell her I have done this.” Drake’s tone was less a threat and more an absolute command. 

“No risk of that, she’d tear my balls off if she knew I was so easily getting what she’s had on her Christmas List for years.”

Drake considered the blonde for a moment before speaking, “I did not create your race deliberately.” Asher stared at him in surprise at the admission. “I fed my human servants drops of my blood as a sign of my blessing. It was a purely ceremonial gesture. It was only after I slept that their descendents evolved into your ‘hominae nocturnum’. It was unpleasant to wake from my slumber to find a fully fledged race of children I had never intended to conceive.”

Asher barked a laugh at the absurdity of it. “Several thousand years of backdated child support would be one Hell of an unpleasant surprise.” 

Drake had enough knowledge of the modern day to appreciate the joke. He bore his fangs in a gesture of amusement that was only half as terrifying as it could have been. “Your race smells only faintly of my blood and you are weak, tainted creatures when compared to my power. I wish to see the effect of introducing my pure blood to your impaired form.”

“You don’t know what it’ll do to me?”

“Much like you introduced your blood to your pets as an amusement to see what would happen, so too am I. If it doesn’t destroy you, it is likely to make you considerably stronger.”

“I’m a pet?”

“Would you prefer to be my livestock?” Drake asked mildly.

Asher grimaced, “Pet is good.” He lifted the glass to look through but it was too thick for any light to penetrate it, so he swirled the viscous liquid around a few times and downed the whole thing in one large swallow.

As the heavy, decadent fluid ran down his throat Asher mourned the fact that he hadn’t savored it more. He may not be the believer type, but this godlike being had deemed him worthy enough to freely give him the best tasting blood he’d ever have and he’d thrown it back like it was water. Just goes to show that the arrogant purebloods were right. You can’t buy class.


	4. Chapter 4

Drake allowed Asher to rest through his change as he hunted down his wayward Hunter King. If the vampire Frost was so well educated on the line of La Magra and placed a high value on the man, then Drake had been right when he had tasted himself in the hunter’s blood. King was a descendent of his followers who had somehow managed to escape the taint of vampirism. Drake would have to search out more information on what had occurred over the millennia he slept through. Apparently, the vampires weren’t his only living legacy. Perhaps there were more out there, clean, pure descendents of his most loyal.

 

The thought thrilled him. Hannibal King belonged to him, had always belonged to him, just as his father and forefathers before him had for hundreds of generations. Whether they’d known it or not it was a part of them. Drake would see the hunter returned to his side, where he belonged, The Hunter King to Drake’s Blood God. Having already tasted King’s blood, there was nowhere he could hide from Drake, who had been created to be the world’s greatest predator.

 

He traced the scent of blood to the waterfront and found that his hunter had holed up on a barge with his Nightstalkers group. Drake considered the hideout for a moment, he sensed his Hunter King inside, but also two males, a female and a child. His mortal's heartbeat was slow and steady as he slept and healed from the injuries Drake had given him.

 

_“The reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good.”_ Mother and child were together in the rear of the barge, reading a story. He had never had much contact with children, their memories were too few to flavor their blood, their bodies were too weak to put up much fight and they were unappetizing sexually. Aside from those three functions he didn’t have any reason to interact with humans and so had never thought much on their young. Drake bared his fangs in amusement at the thought of the girl growing up among these warriors and training all her life to slay demons such as himself. A mere kitten growling her defiance at a lion, the king of the jungle.

 

The men were in the hold of the boat, distracted with their basketball game and heckling each other loudly over the blaring music. They were unarmed and at ease, they would notice nothing before he made himself known.

 

Even wounded his Hunter King was the biggest threat on the vessel. He visited the makeshift infirmary intending to ensure that the medicated sleep became true unconsciousness. He couldn't allow his prize to hurt himself with ill advised heroics. Asher had warned that self-sacrificing foolishness was an ingrained trait in the man and Drake wouldn't lose him before he could figure out how he had been cured of his vampiric taint.

 

He was silent as he entered, but even then, his hunter was on some level aware of the pull in his blood. His brow furrowed and he opened his eyes to squint up at Drake.

 

"Dude. You're dead." Drake wondered for a moment whose photograph and identity Asher had provided him with, but didn't care much. It had turned out to be an unnecessary measure, the Nightstalkers had proven to be completely defenceless and left his prize unguarded. He placed a large palm over his hunter's face and cut off his air. Injured and medicated as he was, King still put up a decent struggle against his grip, but soon slumped in his grasp as unconsciousness overtook him.

 

_“Now, the Nome King had never tried to be good, so he was very bad indeed.”_

The men at play didn't even notice him coming until he was upon them. He took down the larger man first, knocking him out as he tore into the smaller and less physically fit of the two. The short man had a surprising mind, having answered to the calling of a weaponsmith rather than a warrior. He was the designer and supplier of the various intriguing weapons Drake had seen used against his progeny. It was a pity the man was physically worthless and a hinderance to his night’s plans. At a more convenient time Drake may have wished to employ his services. As it was, he did not need weapons, he needed worthwhile beings to recreate and repopulate his bloodline.

 

The men both had a similar set of thoughts upon seeing his face. Their blood whispered their secrets in his ears and he was immediately intrigued with the idea of their ‘Hail Mary’, the Daystar virus. It seemed that the dutiful mother, Somerfield, was a viper hidden in the grass and had prepared quite the bite for him. Drake doubted the virus would work on his advanced biology, he was the creation of an Elder God after all. He had never been human or carried even a drop of mortal weakness in his veins. He was pure power given form and what was not truly born could not be killed.

 

Still, Somerfield had been the one to design his Hunter’s cure and if what they believed was true, this virus could be his solution to the worthless dregs calling themselves vampires. He could cull the herd and start anew, this time with deliberation. No longer would immortality be given freely to the worthless. He could hand select the members of his new race. With that pleasant and uplifting thought in mind Drake found himself thinking fondly on the blind huntress.

 

_“Having decided to conquer the Land of Oz and to destroy the Emerald City and enslave all its people, King Roquat the Red kept planning ways to do this dreadful thing…”_ Ana Somerfield in addition to her wonderful mind, also had excellent instincts. Her heart rate rose immediately and her recitation cut off when the music was silenced. She gave her daughter instructions to hide away and sought Drake out. She was blind of sight but had very good senses and her fear grew steadily as she realized how silent the ship was, all signs of life extinguished. As she navigated the ship, she whirled and trained her gun directly on the vampire lord for a moment before her fear got the better of her and she veered off to aim wildly at other shadows.

 

Drake considered her for a moment, his demonic pupils blown wide as he took her measure. He did not pity her her infirmity or mortality, she rose above it and made something of herself, unlike his pathetic race, given all the advantages in the world and squandering it all. Drake wasn't gentle with her as he took her, giving her a respectful death as the huntress she was. Her screams echoed through the hideout as she fought her end.

 

He hung her body in the showers to be found with her arms splayed in the position of their Christ figure. She would be the first true childe of a Blood God, raised from mortality. Asher was merely a servant, but she would be his first creation. Until she woke, he would guard her daughter, Zoe. The child of his childe was also his and so he would protect her. The young girl screamed and fought his grasp, but was easily cowed.

 

Drake was disappointed that the Daywalker had not been present, but it worked out for the best. Now the halfbreed would be motivated to make an assault upon the House Talos in revenge for the death of his pet hunters and the Daystar would be his best weapon for an attempt to end the ancient immortal.

 

Still, he left a bit of extra motivation in blood on the shower curtain that shrouded Ana’s as yet unrisen body, making his position clear. **-Immortality will come to such as are fit for it-**

 

 

  
Drake ran his fingers over the last line on the open page of the storybook, understanding from his new childe’s blood how to read the Braille _“...and the more he planned the more he believed he would be able to accomplish it."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt that the immortality note with Somerfield's body was super abelist in the movie... so I changed the meaning of it. Also, she's an awesome character, so Drake's keeping her.
> 
> Expanded on the quote from the Oz book that Somerfield was reading too, b/c I looked it up and the whole passage was SO APPROPRIATE for the fic


	5. Chapter 5

Hannibal woke up face to muzzle with a fanged dog. “CHRIST! WHAT THE- WHAT THE FUCK?”

“Good dog.” Asher picked up the little Hell beast and laughed at Hannibal’s dramatic pointing and screaming. Hannibal had never seen the pale vampire so… chipper. On a good day, Asher was a big ball of stress barely a half step from going postal on all of House Talos. On a bad day, even Danica avoided drawing his attention. Hannibal should know, she’d used him as a convenient sacrificial distraction a few too many times.

“WHAT. THE. FUCK.”

“His name’s Pacman. We’ve been porting the vampire gene into other species. Experimenting.”

“You made a goddamn vampire _pomeranian_?”

“Yeah, the strain is actually quite adaptable.” Asher was speaking cordially like they were equals and it sincerely freaked Hannibal out. He was expecting fire and brimstone and beatings for upsetting their plans. Pleasant Asher wasn’t an Asher he knew how to deal with. He looked almost relaxed, and Hannibal didn’t know what to do with that because he knew the pale vampire wasn’t even this sanguine after a thorough fucking, and he would definitely be one to know.

 Hannibal had never claimed to be straight and Asher was a fine specimen of a man, if a massively uptight killjoy. During the two years he’d been kept as a pet by the Talos, he’d much preferred sharing a bed with Asher than with Danica. He typically came out in one piece with fewer claw marks and at least a little blood left in him. Not that it’d slowed him down at all when he was escaping. Lesser evils were, after all, still evils. In the end he didn’t have any more loyalty to Asher than he had to Danica. Tiny shred more grudging respect maybe, but no loyalty.

 The only vampire he’d ever cared for was Deacon, and he was long gone, going on a decade now. The emotion had never been given voice, but he had loved Frost. Hannibal was a textbook case of how a child not getting enough stability or hugs or some shit when they're young twists their concept of love into something unhealthy. He had grown up a lonely foster kid, shuffled from place to place too fast to get attached. In public he would blithely admit that he thought with his dick, and it always lead him astray but the truth was much more embarrassing. Hannibal King was all heart. Unfortunately, his heart didn’t choose any better than his dick would have.

 In the early days, before Hannibal even knew vampires existed, he had tried the military for a while and promptly got himself kicked out for a complete lack of discipline or anything even remotely approaching respect for authority. Hannibal firmly believed that respect had to be earned, not bought with how many shiny stars and colorful ribbons you bedazzled your chest with. He did last long enough to get comfortable taking care of himself in a fight. He may not have any drinking buddies from his old unit, but their beatings had taught him some useful life lessons.

 Next, he’d tried his hand at small time Private Investigative stuff, picking fights with local pimps and gangs over who they sold and who they sold to. He was getting by just fine and making a proper nuisance of himself when a case hit his desk that would change his life. At first it didn’t seem special, crying parents from the suburbs searching for their poor runaway teenager who was lost in the big city, it was his typical bread and butter schtick. Of course, once he’d tracked the girl to a Erebus owned nightclub and basically served himself to Deacon on a platter he’d found out that Mr and Mrs loyal familiar not only didn’t have a kid but weren’t even married.

 Deacon had laid out the bait and he’d walked right into his new life as a vampire with his eyes wide open and goddamn the sights he’d seen. Deacon was Hannibal’s anarchistic, irreverent soul mate. He hated the pureblood aristocracy’s obsession with keeping the status quo and ruling simply by the dubious merit of never having been human. Deacon saw nothing but idiocy in strictly adhering to laws on how to treat and interact with humans created thousands of years ago by a caste of vampires so far removed from the situation that they had never felt the sun.

 Hannibal had been there when Deacon had ripped Dragonetti’s arrogant pureblooded fangs right out of his head and barbequed him in a lovely sunrise. The 800 year old idiot had died screaming about how Deacon would never be a pureblood, as if being a member of a stale, dormant societal class was what Deacon was working towards. Hannibal had enjoyed imagining that the burning body had been his former superior officer or one of the more abusive foster fathers he’d had. Deacon was a man who understood Hannibal’s hatred for authority figures who expected respect as their due because of who they were or what position they held, rather than bothering to earn it.

 Hannibal had only been with Deacon for a handful of years, so he’d missed the previous century of preparations, but he’d been around for the culmination of Deacon’s life work. He knew everything there was to know about La Magra, and though he’d never tell Blade, he knew the origin story there as well. He’d even met the angry hybrid’s mother a few times, Vanessa may have been a nice lady as a human, but as a vamp she was a stone cold bitch. She was manipulative and shallow and was probably the only one in Erebus who hadn’t known that Deacon was just playing with her and keeping her around to use as psychological warfare.

 Not that Hannibal’s situation was much different. He never found out why, but Deacon had put a decent amount of effort into framing up that fake case to get his hands on Hannibal. He probably had some nefarious purpose to fulfill as well. Or maybe that was just Deacon's typically underhanded way of getting his hands on someone he wanted. The courting habits of vampires could get really fucking weird and Vanessa had never shared the story of her seduction. She viewed Hannibal as 'the other woman' trying to steal away her man. Mercury thought Vanessa’s jealousy was hilarious because she was Deacon’s first woman by a seniority of decades and was well used to Deacon’s free loving ways. Vanessa was too scared of the elder vampress to start anything, so she amused herself by hating on Hannibal.

 He knew his place though, Hannibal may have been Deacon’s third ‘woman’, but he was the only man in the harem. Deacon seemed to keep him as a pleasant distraction from his plans. Deacon was all sex all the time. He just wasn’t a vampire that did monogamy. Hannibal wished that he could have been the man’s one and only, but unlike Vanessa he never held out hope for it. The only evidence Hannibal had ever seen that Deacon felt anything for him was that he was never punished for his constant disrespectful attitude and habit of completely stubborn soft heartedness. Even at his most annoying, Deacon humored Hannibal’s refusal to drink live blood or use his vampiric abilities. He alone was allowed to drink bagged blood and his disgust towards Deacon’s blood raves was considered a quaint quirk of personality rather than a turnoff. Turns out that Hannibal wasn’t any more a model vampire than he was a soldier or PI. At least he was consistent.

He supposed it had been a mercy for Deacon to leave him fucked into unconsciousness when he went off to become a world slayer. Deacon probably thought he was protecting Hannibal from himself and the risk that merging with La Magra would overwrite his memories of them together or, even more likely, keeping Hannibal from butting in and screwing something up. In the end Deacon had only saved him from death at Blade’s hand. On the bad days Hannibal wished he'd died with the rest of Erebus. He just wasn't made to be alone, he needed someone to be loyal to. He didn’t even hope for it to be reciprocal anymore, he just wanted someone willing to keep him around. Hannibal felt like such a sad puppy left out in the rain some days and hated himself for it.

After Deacon’s death and the fall of the House of Erebus came the rise of House Talos. Fucking Danica. She wanted to keep Hannibal as a convenient snack. She thought that because he’d been loyal to Deacon, despite the guy’s habit of sleeping around, that he was broken and weak. She had never understood it, Hannibal’s endlessly devoted loyalty to those he loved, or why he wasn't interested in anything she offered or threatened him with. Deacon was dead and still he was keeping the man’s secrets, held close to his heart the way his sire once had been.

Turns out that a bitter, heartbroken Hannibal was an even bigger pain in the ass than normal. He’d spent two years making Danica and Asher just as miserable as he was. He was SO MUCH more trouble than he was worth that he was surprised they’d never put him out of their collective misery.

After escaping Danica, Hannibal had come to care for the small family unit of Abby, Ana and Zoe. He had loved them the best way he knew how, taking their cure and becoming a Nightstalker for them. It wasn’t hard to start killing vampires, he had always been a fighter, he just needed a cause. It didn’t even require a crisis of morality or guilt on his part. Deacon had taught him nothing but contempt for his own race, no matter which race you were talking about. Humanity was weak in body and the vampires were weak in spirit. Deacon had just reinforced Hannibal’s long held belief that people as a whole were worthless and only very few were worth his time and energy. In some ways he was still doing Deacon’s will, destroying the unworthy and ushering in a new era. He had been a big fan of natural selection and probably would have cheered Hannibal on for finally baring his now proverbial fangs.

So, he played the dutiful hunting partner who brought Abby home safe to Ana every night and culled the unworthy dregs of vampire society. It wasn’t a good life, but at least it was never boring. He basked in the second hand love of the blissful couple and did his civic duty to protect the human race. All the while, he hid the fact that aside from his little family, he didn’t actually give a flying fuck about the survival of the human race and also that the cure hadn’t worked completely. His senses were too good, his reflexes too honed and his healing, while helpful, wasn’t exactly human. Hannibal was a terrible hunter, just like he was awful at everything else. Again, he had the consistency of an old dog refusing new tricks.

He did get to continue bothering House Talos though, paying them back for two lovely years of captivity. Imagining the sour look on Asher’s face and Danica’s tantrums every time he destroyed a nightclub or crippled a familiar brought joy to his life. Still, he was constantly surprised his powers were strong enough that despite his apathy he somehow STILL hadn’t managed to get himself killed.

Maybe this time. Chained to the floor and at Asher and Danica’s non-existent mercy once again, somehow Hannibal doubted they would go to the futile effort of trying to housetrain him. He was a born stray, never meant to be domesticated.

Hannibal’s preoccupation with the sudden removal of the stick up Asher’s ass kept him distracted as Jarko and Danica gave him his expected lumps, only occasionally fishing for information on the Daystar. The slight pauses where their rhythm was thrown off by Asher’s absence from his usual part in the beating were glaring and even more perplexing than his attitude shift.

Something was up. Hannibal knew Asher didn’t have any kinder feelings for him than he did of the blonde. Their relationship consisted of needling at each other and having fantastic hate sex, none of which had ever protected Hannibal from beatings when he legitimately pissed the siblings off, which was always. Why was Asher suddenly bringing out the kid gloves now?

Hannibal had an uncomfortable feeling that the answer to that question was roughly 7 thousand years old.


	6. Chapter 6

His Hunter King had a look of desolate defeat upon his face when Drake entered with the child. He cast a sharp look to Asher, who merely shrugged and tilted his head towards where his sister was whispering cruel threats and promises into King’s ear. Drake’s eyes narrowed as the diseased tick threatened to turn and starve his hunter then offer up his ward as a meal. If Danica survived the night, Drake would end her with his own hands for making assumptions that she had any right to the life of the child or to any part of Hannibal King.

 

“Leave us.” Danica bristled up like an angry cat, but Asher thrust her into Jarko’s arms and the musclebound idiot was smart enough to drag her out of the room as he retreated from Drake’s irritation. Asher gently took custody of Zoe, briefly meeting his master’s eyes and conveying promises to keep the child from his insane sister.

 

Drake contemplated his captive hunter in silence as the door was closed and locked behind the Talos, giving them privacy together for the first time. King’s eyes were firmly focused on the door where the little girl had disappeared. He was bare chested and the chain between his wrists was laced through loops welded into the metal floor. 

 

“Hannibal King.”

 

“Drake.” The response was immediate as golden brown eyes finally rolled away from the door to glance him up and down insolently in a manner perfectly calculated to irritate. It just served to remind Drake how young the mortal really was, hiding behind his own immaturity.

 

He was struck with a sudden desire to hear his true name from the bound man, “Draquila, actually. It was somewhat lost in translation over the years.”

 

“Wow, you must have been teased a LOT as a kid if you were stuck with that.”

 

“I have never been a child. I came into being fully formed.” The hunter scoffed at him, but his eyes focused to a shrewd glare at Drake’s next words. “Tell me. What do you know of your own origins?”

 

Those strong shoulders rolled in a artfully casual shrug. “Not much. I’m an orphan.”

 

Drake gave into the desire to trace his fingers over Hannibal’s shoulder, flicking out one claw to peel up the medical tape and slowly pull off the bandage covering the wound he had given the hunter barely a day earlier. Despite the blood soaked into the bandage, the wound appeared weeks old, shiny pink flesh filling in the impaled hole that should have been barely scabbed over. Drake could tell by the tense set of the tendons in his hunter’s neck that he knew how inappropriately advanced his healing was, even while rigidly refusing to look down at the evidence.

 

“Does anyone know that you aren’t truly a part of humanity?” At the caress of his fingers over the actual wound Hannibal wrenched his shoulder out of Drake’s grasp but the point was made. The demon allowed the retreat, licking the traces of blood off of his fingers.

 

Drake could feel Hannibal’s eyes on him as he made a show of his enjoyment, closing his eyes and revelling in the sparks of awareness that flowed through him at this second, fresher taste of his exquisite Hunter King. He very slowly licked each of his fingers clean, even those that hadn’t been bloodied. King’s enraptured eyes followed his tongue as Drake allowed it to lengthen to an inhuman degree and twine between his digits.

 

He pinned the hunter with his feral eyes, feeling the pupils split and flare with his excitement. “I can taste your need to submit in your blood. You are a beast begging to be chained and commanded.”

 

“Hate to break it to you but I’m the kind of  beast that tends to bite anyone who tries to control it.”

 

“...and yet you continue giving opportunities for people to try. The military, Frost, the Talos, the Nightstalkers. All of them had you in hand, but let you slip away. You wish to be captured my pet, but more than that you wish to be  kept .” Drake circled around behind Hannibal and ran a hand gently through his hair. He grinned at the angry wrench of the proud head, as the mortal refused to be coddled and condescended to. This was one beast that could not be considered lesser, he would be a proper hunting partner and would demand respect as an equal or he would turn on Drake the way he had on the Talos.

 

“I’m  NO ONE’S pet.” Hannibal hissed and bared his flat omnivorous teeth at Drake in defiance. A completely predatory act that showed how very thin the veil of humanity was in his hunter.

 

“The Norse tradition told of a great wolf, destined to kill the king of their gods, Odin. The wolf, Fenrir, allowed the terrified gods to chain him down. He considered it great sport, sitting still for their careful bindings again and again, but breaking free each time. One day a golden chain was forged that finally held the beast. Perhaps I can forge your golden chain my wolf.”

 

“... or  perhaps you'll be my Odin and someday I’ll kill you.”  

 

Drake hummed in amusement, “Perhaps.”

 

“How do you know any of that anyways. Not many Vikings in the ancient desert.”

 

“I ate a professor of mythology. Unlike the weak vampires that you know, I am so much more. I can read memories, knowledge and thoughts through the blood I take.” Drake waved his clean hand in demonstration, “I know you, my hunter, I know what you fear and what you desire. You don’t want to give anyone your loyalty. You want them to take it from you.”

 

Hannibal just gaped at him in dismay, not sure how to take the news that the father of all vampires was fucking telepathic.

 

“You are wasted in this era of shallow politics and petty civility. In my day you would have been a commander of armies. A savage creature let loose upon the world to wreak what it willed.” Drake went to one leather clad knee in front of his hunter, the closest he had ever come to deference to another creature in his lifetime. He reached out to caress the side of Hannibal’s face, stroking his thumb firmly across the hunter’s split lip and making blood well up again. The hunter’s breath hitched and he swayed forward into Drake’s hand, feeling the call of his blood.

 

“They try to break you, to tame you. I would only have asked that you battle at my side.” Drake’s eyes burned into Hannibal’s as he brought a bead of blood up to his mouth, spreading it over his own lower lip in an indirect kiss. He sucked his lip clean, savoring the taste that burst across his palate and his mind. “.. and in my bed.”

 

Hannibal swallowed hard and flicked his tongue over his own lips, instinctively gathering the taste of blood and Drake’s touch, but regained his equilibrium enough for his smart mouth to kick in, “Sorry, the other side called dibs.”

 

“Does that make you a prize to be competed over and won, my Hunter King?” Drake sensed the moment was lost and regained his feet. Part of him mourned the hunter’s stubbornness, but he knew the chase would make victory all the sweeter in the end.

 

Hannibal snorted, “You’re obviously going senile in your old age, I’m no prize. Ask Asher and Danica, I’m more of a plague. A plague on you, a plague on your house and a plague on your cow.”

 

“I own no livestock and my house, as you call it, could use a good plague. My cause is not so different than yours. Your allies will come for you, and they will use their Daystar to cull the weak from my line. I welcome the cleansing.”

 

“You… want.. us to kill vampires?” Hannibal sagged in his chains, dumbfounded and confused again as his righteous anger was deflected. “Dude, what the hell?”

 

“Vampires are an aberration of evolution. I was the first. I knew nothing of creating more like me, there were no rules, no guidelines. I fed my loyal slaves bits of my blood and millennia after I passed into my rest the descendents of my servants mutated and spawned this ugly race. I can feel the traces of my blood within them.”

 

“Vampires are all descended from slaves?” Hannibal barked a laugh. “The most arrogant race in the world and they’re spawned from the same low class caste they try to shove humanity into?”

 

“They are not the only ones.” Drake said pointedly and Hannibal sobered immediately. “Why do you think you’re so different from the others. Vampirism is a disease arisen from my blood, able to infect those not of my descent, but you... You are pure blooded. You were born with me in your veins. It is why you alone were able to throw off the effects of the infection. It was already a part of you.”

 

“ No .” Hannibal denied softly, eyes losing focus with the same distantly wounded expression he’d had when Danica was threatening him with infection. His quick mouth abandoned him in a clear show of emotional distress.

 

“You are already bound in golden chains, my hunter. They are a part of you.  I am a part of you. You are mine.” Drake leaned down and took a fistfull of his Hunter King’s hair, leaning the unresponsive head back and claiming the lush mouth in a consuming kiss. He took his time and licked every trace of blood out of Hannibal’s mouth and soothed the sting of his split lip with his tongue. 

 

He whispered fiercely in his little Hunter King’s ear, “After the battle, when the Talos are dead, I will claim you, my hunter, and then I will  keep you, and nothing, not even you, will stop me.” He left the man there to think on his fate, stunned and slumped bonelessly against his chains.


	7. Chapter 7

The final battle of the Talos, when it came, was over quickly. Overall, Drake was pleased with the outcome.

 

Asher followed his orders and managed to keep his sister and her pet hulk sufficiently distracted during their resumed interrogation in order to somewhat protect King from injury as Drake cared for his childe’s daughter. The girl, Zoe, was delightful company, unafraid of him even after she believed her mother dead at his hands.

 

He considered her small form, “Do you know who I am?”

 

“You’re the Nome King.” 

 

“Hah. The Nome King.” Drake considered Ana’s memories of the Oz books. The Nome King had lost his kingdom but was still considered a King by all he met. It wasn’t a completely inaccurate comparison, although the books were childishly simplistic in their morality. “How sweet. Tell me child, do you want to die?”

 

“I’m not afraid. I’ll go to heaven.”

 

“There is no heaven. No God, no angels. The only thing in your future is nothingness.” A sliver of pity entered Drake then, as he considered how misplaced her absolute faith was. As the earthborn son of La Magra he knew the truths of what lay beyond her comfortable and protected existence here in the physical realm. He knew what horror was waiting in the dark between worlds, after all, it had given birth to a creature such as him. “But what if you could change that. What if you could remain a child forever? Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you accept that gift?”

 

“My friends are going to kill you.” It was a pity she was too young to understand what he was offering her. Drake greatly enjoyed her fire. 

 

Once the hunters finally entered the building, he tracked them with his senses as they made their way up through the building. Drake waited until Ana’s lover, the huntress, Abigail, approached and left the child to be found. She would be protected as he faced the Daywalker.

 

Drake would admit that crossing blades with the hybrid was the most fun he’d had in millennia. Even centuries before he slept, no one near to being his match could be found. It was thrilling to once again find a somewhat worthy opponent, although the hybrid didn't seem to notice he was only being toyed with.

 

* * *

Asher climbed up to the highest catwalk and took aim at Blade while he was distracted with Drake. The hybrid was a slippery fucker and Asher really didn’t want his new sire dead. For once in his life, Asher actually had faith in a cause, he truly believed that Drake could bring about the revolution that Danica and Deacon before her had tried to spark. The ancient blood demon was the key to a new world order and Asher was desperate to be a part of it.

 

He tried to find a good angle between the iron struts of the architecture, but before he could pull the trigger, pain spiked into his side and a silver tipped arrow bit deep between his ribs in a well executed kill shot. Asher was lucky that Whistler took his death as a given and was moving on down the hall to her next victim before he’d fully realized that his painful death had not occurred. It seemed that Drake’s blood really was a miracle cure to all the usual vampire weaknesses.

 

“Fuck this.” Asher tore the arrow out and made himself scarce, retreating to hide out in his office, not willing to tempt fate twice in one night. This was what he got for trying to play loyal minion. Drake could take care of himself and had warned Asher that he planned to let the Nightstalker’s secret weapon be deployed. House Talos was a lost cause.

 

Asher heard Drake roar and could taste the change in the air as the Daystar virus spread through the vents. The sounds of his house choking and dying around him spread slowly to encompass the whole building. With his newly enhanced hearing, he listened to Danica’s confused cries of pain from a floor away. Asher slid down the wall of his office, covering his face with his hands. She may have been insane and unbearable, but she was still his sister. “Bye, Dan. I'll see you in Hell.”

 

As his throat tickled and his eyes watered Asher was only half sure that he would survive the biological weapon and not follow his sister. Drake’s confidence had only extended to his own survival. Asher was still nothing more than an experiment to see if any part of the vampire race could be salvaged. He waited in his office, silent and motionless as he heard the hunters collect themselves and leave, but he didn’t move until a SWAT team arrived to ‘evacuate’ him. 

 

Asher hesitated in the doorway out to the street, taking in the rays of dawn that spilled across the front stair of the building. Hesitantly, he took his first step into the sun in decades. He winced and shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked up into the brightening sky and felt… nothing. No pain, no heat, he was a daywalker now. 

 

He had to play off his gleeful laughter as a hysteric response when it gained him odd looks from the emergency response team members around him. Luckily, as the few surviving Talos familiars noticed exactly who was standing in full sunlight in front of them, there were plenty of others suddenly suffering the symptoms of shock for the EMTs to worry over.

 

Asher played the part of the traumatized businessman to the hilt, clutching his orange shock blanket and watching the emergency crews mill around with a sharp eye. There were enough injured and dead familiars in the building that despite all the ash, his presence and survival wouldn’t be the least bit suspicious. He had to dodge a few well meaning EMTs as they attempted to care for him until he found refuge with one bearing the glyph of House Chthon. The gloved fingers stuttered on his silent pulse point but a flash of fang scared the young woman into silence. 

 

Asher suspected the continued exam was less for show and more an attempt to determine how he was surviving in the sunlight. He smirked cruelly at her, let her bring the information of a daywalking Talos to Marcus Van Sciver. It would positively burn the other man up if he thought that the scutwork cleanup job he had gloated about the Twelve dumping on House Talos had lead to Asher discovering the secrets of daywalking. Van Sciver was another turnblood in the vein of Frost and Danica, constantly seeking to raise his status over purebloods. Being able to frustrate the man with the knowledge that Asher was daywalking soothed the sting of embarrassment that the EMT familiar would also be reporting that all of House Talos had fallen to a trio of hunters and a single well placed arrow.

 

Asher kept an eye out for the spies of other houses, and one of his pale brows rose in interest as Blade’s sheet covered dead body was wheeled past him on a gurney. The same Blade that he had heard King and Whistler drag out of the building long before the police had arrived. He smirked in realization when he recognized the pull of his blood towards the prone figure and noted who else was watching the body as it was loaded into the back of an ambulance and taken away. House Talos may be dead, but they would be known as the house that brought down Blade, at least until the man started acting up again.

 

Asher waved one of the FBI agents over and spun a sob story about how he would have to contact the families of his dead personnel and at what morgue might they identify and claim the bodies? As soon as he had the address Asher made his excuses and slipped away. There was nothing left for him here.


	8. Chapter 8

 

Hannibal would never admit it, but he was a little bit... tiny bit... minuscule really, disappointed that Drake had overestimated himself and died of the Daystar Virus. The blood demon talked a big game and Hannibal had almost bought into the dream of finding a real family in an emerging vampire utopia. Hey, it wasn’t even in the top 10 of his weirdest dreams for the future, he read too many comic books for that, it was just the most disappointing because for a moment, it had seemed plausible.

 

Every orphan dreams of family coming to take them away. Hannibal’s dreams just had pointier teeth than most.

 

Instead of being swept off to Never Never Land where he’d never have to grow up, when reality hit, Hannibal was left feeling old and without even the little bit of a life he’d scraped together with the Nightstalkers. Blade wandered off to who-the-fuck-knew-where to kill something or contemplate his navel or join a band, Hannibal didn’t particularly care. Ana, Hedges and Dex were all dead and Abby was quitting the life to try and take care of Zoe. He didn’t even consider trying to invite himself to that party. He may have attempted to insinuate himself into Abby and Ana’s little family, but with everything falling apart at the seams it was more obvious than ever that he’d only been on the outside, looking in at the trio. Story of his life; always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

 

He gave Zoe a big hug and a kiss on the head, promised to always be her favorite Uncle Hannibal and made Abby promise to call if she needed anything. The tone of their goodbye made it pretty clear on both sides that neither of them thought it likely that she’d ever follow through on the promise. He wasn’t expecting to see either of them again and considering his quality of life, was glad of the fact. After her own shit childhood, Abby would do everything in her power to make sure Zoe was happy and maybe she’d find a little slice of normal for herself along the way.

 

Falling back on his last option, Hannibal installed himself as a nuisance in Somerfield’s Daystar think-tank science buddy, Caldur’s lab. He spent his nights hunting down the messy remnants of House Talos and his days letting the man poke and prod at him, testing for effects of being ground zero for the Daystar release, looking for proof of Drake’s claims that he was born with super-vamp’s blood in his veins and trying to figure out how Somerfield had cured him. Basically, Caldur sucked more blood out of him in little vials than any vamp ever had. Fuck, he hated doctors.

 

The whole thing was a bit of a fog to be honest. Hannibal just kinda drifted aimlessly, the way he always did when everything fell apart around him and took vital parts of him with it. Freefalling through life and waiting for the inevitable moment when he either landed on his feet or finally found the end of the line. He should have been used to the aching burn of disappointed dreams by now. Life loved nothing more than kicking Hannibal when he was down. Which is why he greeted Caldur’s betrayal with a sick sense of bitter resignation rather than surprise when the man drugged him and had an unidentified team of burly foreign guys drag him into a shipping crate. Seriously, fuck doctors HARD, preferably with something rusty.

 

Chained to a chair in the dark and attached to an IV full of sedative, Hannibal wondered what the hell his life actually was, because he was pretty sure no one else in the history of the world had ever had to put up with this much absolute bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time, but I'm finally back to this fic. I completed it for the WIP Big Bang over on LJ and have added some beautiful cover art from Bluefire986.
> 
> I forgot that this weekend was Boston Comic Con, so because I'm exhausted and didn't plan my posting date well, to start off you get a short transition chapter as we head into the Underworld part of the fic. The rest of this fic is going to be a wild ride and has completely spun out of my control in length, so I hope you'll enjoy.
> 
> Updates will be weekly until we're done.


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